Occupy Wall Street: help us reconstruct the 'pepper spray' incident

Eyewitness accounts, video and photographs posted online tell some of the story of the moment when a police officer used pepper spray on Occupy Wall Street protesters. Help us piece together the rest of what happened

Occupy Wall Street: help us reconstruct the 'pepper spray' incident

Eyewitness accounts, video and photographs posted online tell some of the story of the moment when a police officer used pepper spray on Occupy Wall Street protesters. Help us piece together the rest of what happened

As my colleague Karen McVeigh has reported, internet activists who support the Occupy Wall Street protests identified the New York police officer who used pepper spray on female protesters by studying video and photographs posted online.

After activists then posted Bologna's home address online, a police official told the New York Times that the officer had been correctly identified and was concerned about the safety of his family. The inspector was not at home on Tuesday when the Guardian attempted to contact him for comment.

Anthony Bologna (left), the New York police officer who used pepper spray to silence female protesters on Saturday, in a screengrab from YouTube.

Even before the NYPD source confirmed the officer's identity, the Occupy Wall Street blog pointed to more YouTube video, which appeared to show his movements just before, during and just after the incident.

One clip, which begins about 80 seconds before the incident, shows that the female protesters were objecting loudly to the police tactic of forcing them away from West 12th Street with orange mesh when the inspector walked directly up to them and fired pepper spray in their faces. The clip also shows that the women were shouting "Shame!" at officers who had tackled another protester in front of them when they were silenced by the gas.

The woman who shot that video, Jeanne Mansfield, also wrote an account of what she witnessed for the Boston Review. According to Mansfield, the spraying was so indiscriminate that bystanders like her, and at least one police officer, were also hit with the gas.

A white-shirt, now known to be NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, comes from the left, walks straight up to the three young girls at the front of the crowd, and pepper-sprays them in the face for a few seconds, continuing as they scream "No! Why are you doing that?!" The rest of us in the crowd turn away from the spray, but it's unavoidable. My left eye burns and goes blind and tears start streaming down my face.

Another, longer clip, seems to offer a brief close-up glimpse of Bologna, close to the scene of the incident less than a minute before he pulled out his gas canister. The same clip also offers a better view of the forcible arrest of some protesters before in the incident and shows bystanders helping, and interviewing, the women immediately after they were sprayed.

One of the women, Chelsea Elliott, told the Village Voice that she had been speaking to one officer when another suddenly grabbed a woman next to her, moments before the gas was sprayed. She said:

I heard screams near me, and this young girl near me was shoved down [by the police] – their hands were on her head until she reached the pavement (she was yelling because the cops were beating up some 19-year-old kid). I screamed something like, "Stop! Why are you doing this?" There was blood and shit; it was terrifying. I looked at the cop I'd been talking to, and he had a blank but worried expression.

Then this cop in a white collared shirt came around and just sprayed us, not even one steady stream, more like you were spraying a plant – me and three or four other girls. I fell to the ground, and the girl behind me, this pretty, thin girl, a total hippie, with short hair and a gray tank top, they got her so bad!

We were just lying on the ground, it was extremely painful. The cop I was talking to, he talked to the cop who sprayed us, and was like, "Thanks for the warning."

While the various clips allow viewers to piece together some of what took place on Saturday, the Guardian is trying to build a more complete picture of the incident and would like your help.

Any readers who witnessed the event, or have come across more visual evidence of what took place, can either can post links in the comment thread below or contact me directly via email or Twitter.